Wednesday, August 19, 2009

The surprise team of the East has to be the Atlanta Dream. Their personnel is outstanding. Marynell Meadors is in that grouping of two or three Coach of the Year candidates, what she has done with her personnel has been brilliant. They’re athletic, they’re long, they’re deep and Holdsclaw gives them that player that can make plays. You have to have a player that when everything falls apart there is someone that can make a play. You didn’t draw it up, you can’t coach it, you just applaud it – and Holdsclaw is that player. She can get you 10-12 points in a quarter just by being absolutely brilliant.

They have been injury free for most of the season. Their defense is good enough. It’s not great, but it’s good enough and the reason why is that they are such a tremendous rebounding team that sometimes they rebound so well that some of the deficiencies defensively are not exposed because of the pure size that they have. Look at what de Souza and Sancho Lyttle have done.

They had the experiment with Nikki Teasley and that failed and they are lucky it didn’t’ cost them anything to bring back Ivory Latta. The experiment of Coco Miller at the point didn’t really work either and Ivory has just given them what they need. They push tempo, they take what you give them on offense, and they get into a good rhythm.

Their personnel is all driven, they are all driven to win, and they are deep. Michelle Snow comes off of the bench; Angel McCoughtry comes off of the bench; these guys are just really good. They are not a great passing team but they are a great one-on-one team and they are just hard to play against.